I have a dataset with dates that I am brining into Stata via insheet. The data is comma delimited and the dates are being formatted by the source database like the following:
3/12/03 0:00:00
11/5/03 0:00:00
Unfortunately I can't get rid of the h/m/sec portion at the source and Stata is formatting the field as a string. I want to convert the m/d/y portion to a date to allow time series analysis.
I tried dstring as a first step and got the following:
. destring dischdate, g(ddate) ignore(" 0:00:00")
dischdate contains characters not specified in ignore(); no generate
The same error was produced with and without the quotes and/or leading space in the ignore statement. Recast does not allow date as a type.
Any thoughts on how to handle the conversion would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Eric
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